Neil Wallis and the “Poor Phil” Article

Bishop Hill reports that UEA have released a portion of their correspondence and documents with Neil Wallis and Outside Organisation (see here); correspondence here. They have claimed exemptions for much of the request.

Under s.36(2)(b)(i) & (ii), they claimed that “release of some of the requested information would, or would be likely, to inhibit the free & frank provision of advice or the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberations”. Under s 40(2), They claimed that some of the information WAS “Personal information”. Under s. 41(1), they claimed that “disclosure of information would … constitute an actionable breach of confidence”. Under s 43(2), they said that “disclosure of information would, or would be likely, to prejudice the commercial interests of a person as defined by the Act”.

The limited information made available did clarify some points. Wallis seems to arrive on the scene in February 2010, not in early December 2009 (as speculated in my recent post here.) Thus the front page article for which Wallis claimed credit was not the Ben Webster article of December 4, 2009 but two Richard Girling articles in Murdoch’s Sunday Times on February 7, 2010 – here and here. These started or promoted many memes of the Empire Strikes Back phase of Climategate: blaming CRU misconduct since 2003 on FOI requests in late July 2009, focusing on the “poor Phil” meme, associating Jones with the honorable David Kelly, building up the alleged “death threats”.

As noted in stories about Wallis’ recent arrest in connection with the phone hacking scandal, Wallis, a former News of the World editor, maintained close connections with the Murdoch newspapers, which may have assisted him with obtaining a prominent placement for the poor Phil article.

Acton and Davies were delighted with the Times article.

Wallis seems to have been behind the tactic of offering up Jones for this one interview with a soft interviewer and then closing down access. (Briffa has avoided being interviewed altogether.)

Other emails show that Wallis and Outside Organisation prepped Acton and Phil Jones for their appearance before the Parliamentary Committee. If the resulting appearances represented improvement on their pre-coaching standards, one can only wonder at what they were like before coaching by Outside Organisation. Both Acton and Jones were savaged by the London press – see contemporary CA report here.

Acton was described by Quentin Letts as follows:

Professor Edward Acton… provided much-needed comic relief. Professor Acton, a younger version of Professor Calculus from the Tintin books, beamed and nodded at everything Professor Jones said. ‘I think that answer was spot-on,’ he cried, after listening to one response from the terror-stricken Jones.

Professor Acton’s left eyebrow started doing a little jiggle of its own. His eyeballs bulged with admiration for the climate-change supremo. His lips were pulled so wide in wonderment they must nearly have split down the
seams like banana skins.

Letts described Jones as follows:

Others, watching the tremulous Professor Jones, will have been less impressed. He may be right about man-made climate change. But you do rather hope that politicians sought second, third, even 20th opinions before swallowing his theories and trying to change the world’s industrial output.

I guess he didn’t get Neil Wallis’ memo.

Wallis and Outside Organisation appear to have been on retainer from February through at least April. The closing emails report Wallis being invited to attend a “do” by Acton and invited to stay at Wood Hall.

The new information also shows even more conclusively the ridiculousness of the Joe Romm/Keith Olbermann theory that the Murdochs had sabotaged East Anglia’s public relations. Quite the contrary. It seems that the Murdoch papers had helped East Anglia and that the university was delighted with their coverage in the Murdoch press.

We assume there will be many requests for follow-up interviews following tomorrow’s Sunday Times publication – which we have agreed will almost certainly be denied at this stage… If there is anything which, despite that guiding principle of no further interviews, is deemed to require urgent further reconsideration, then the UEA press office should feel free to contact the Outside team at any time. 20110826114851221_0001.pdf

Is it not seen by the client as the PR professionals duty to spin/slant the story in a direction that is favourable to the client? Is it not therefore logic to assume that the same PR professional will have applied a similar spin/slant to their claims of previous success?

The closing emails report Wallis being invited to attend a “do” by Acton and invited to stay at Wood Hall.

Just for the record, those “closing” emails are dated Aug. 30, 2010 … pretty close to the (Aug 31) date of the “pre-publication” release of the IAC report (which, according to the copy I had d/l from the IAC site, was actually created on Aug. 25). Is it possible that someone at UEA had received a privileged advanced copy of this pre-publication release – and that this planned September 29 “do” was to be a celebration of yet another “PR” victory for UEA (in that they were not directly implicated in the IAC’s report). Nah … must be just another of those coincidences, I’m sure.

It’s also worth noting that there are some emails between April and August which indicate that Wallis was, at the very least, still in the loop.

Perhaps at that point Wallis had been “reassigned” to “assist” the Norfolk Constabulary with “PR” related to their “investigations” and his missives to UEA were out of the goodness of his heart.

The Aug. 30 E-mail [20110826115551202_0001] is amusing, for a few reasons:

1. It appears to be one of two (the other being the Jun. 17 E-mail noted above) for which the Inbox identification [that of Dr. Lucy Mouland (VCO), and not a recipient, so presumably as “Senior Assistant Registrar” had access to (recipient) Edward Acton’s Inbox] was not redacted.

2. It appears to be a response (via blackberry) from Neil Wallis [although the From: line has been redacted!] to Acton’s invite to the Sept. 29 “do” that Wallis had already accepted, after receiving a “lovely invitation” from Katie (whoever she might be!)

If I had a more suspicious mind, I’d almost be inclined to wonder if they didn’t play “who has the least incriminating Inbox” before they did their E-mail cherry-picking in response to these FOI requests (from BH and John Walker)

Good question (for which I have no answer … mere speculation!) Perhaps he sent 2 “storylines” and this was the one Wallis (or whoever actually sent it to Girling) “recommended” … But Girling, being a good green chap decided to go with both?!

That .pdf file seems to be of the Sunday Times article here. Based on the strange mix of fonts, I think the article was scanned with an optical character recognition program, and it distorted a “RECOMMEND?” link next to the article. [Not present in the archived version linked above.] Note that in the line below there is “PHOT.GRAPHS”, indicating some textual distortion.

Speaking of interesting questions … 20110826114805839_0001[Wallis to Action, Feb. 7] is a response to the following from Acton:

I am delighted by the amount achieved. Now we must see how the coverage unfolds. But it seems to me you and Sam have helped us maximize the chances of that elusive line in the sand. […] [emphasis added -hro]

I’m not sure if the part I bolded was written in Acton-ese or tabloid-ese. But could someone translate it into English?!

Seems to me that the UEA drew a line in the sand concerning the release of further information. Rather than come clean, they wanted to obfuscate or refuse to communicate. The use of OO was to determine how much (dis)info to release and how as well as when. That having been done, his reflection concerns whether the planned result was going to pan out.

“The new information also shows even more conclusively the ridiculous of the Joe Romm/Keith Olbermann theory that the Murdochs had sabotaged East Anglia’s public relations. Quite the contrary. It seems that the Murdoch papers had helped East Anglia and that the university was delighted with their coverage in the Murdoch press. ”

I have read that Murdoch’s wife, the attractive lady who defended him in the pie throwing
incident, is pro-AGW. We can’t assume that the Murdoch media empire is going to be
monolithicly anti-AGW, as one may get the impression from watching the American version of Fox News.

Steve, not that I like to pick nits, but … I believe the “front page article” quote was attributed to Bowen, not to Wallis:

“They came to us and said, ‘We have a huge problem – we are being completely knocked apart in the press,’” says (OO’s) Sam Bowen. “They needed someone with heavyweight contacts who could come in and sort things out, and next week there was a front-page story telling it from their side.”

The role of Neil Wallis, formerly editor of The People, deputy editor of The Sun and, most recently, executive editor of the News Of The World, is to lend heavy-hitting tabloid expertise, leading some jobs, following Edwards on others.
[…]
Wallis led on the University of East Anglia “climategate” job, when Outside was drafted in[…]

Additionally, in Acton’s now disclosed effusive thanks for the “poor Phil” Feb. 7 piece(s) he says:

you and Sam have helped […]”

Since Bowen was the “strategy” guy, I agree it probably was Wallis who did the deed, but he didn’t make the claim 🙂

So, in the interest of accuracy in posting (and in the absence of clarity in the source material) – since the Music World piece doesn’t actually specifiy week, article or “draftsman” – perhaps you might consider amending your post to read “… front page article for which OO claimed credit…”

It is interesting how this confirms my nasty snipped comment from a month ago where I said the best possible interpretation for Jones was that the “Poor Phil” storyline was contrived make-believe, rather than the far worse interpretation, which no longer needs to be said.

The “poor Phil” thing was real enough. There is plenty of evidence that Jones felt very sorry for himself and aged measurably during the experience.

However, in other scandals, spinmeisters don’t usually succeed in diverting attention from the scandal itself to the problems of “poor Conrad” [Black] or “poor Bill” [Clinton] or “poor Martha” [Stewart]. In cases like this, the investigators have a job to do and seldom pull their punches because they are worried about the subjects. I think that there’s a lesson to be learned from people who’ve dealt well with humiliation – Martha Stewart being a good example of someone who dealt effectively with going to jail.

A measure of the effectiveness of Outside Organisation’s spinning is that they managed to bracket Jones with the honorable David Kelly in the “poor Phil” articles. This diverted attention from Jones’ conduct – which, unlike Kelly’s, deserved criticism – to Jones’ state of mind.

The success of the spinning can be seen in Oxburgh’s opening letter to his panel where he focuses on the “stress” that events have caused to CRU as opposed to CRU’s conduct:

There is clearly a high level of stress that has been generated by aggressive and abusive blogs and a very large number of requests for information under Freedom of Information legislation. I wanted to reassure them that we were in no sense seeking to victimise them further and that our scrutiny would be as fair as we could make it.

Kerry Emanuel said at the time that it was “truly pitiful” to see “what all this has done to” Jones and expressed his hope that Jones “may be spared further trouble.”

Wallis might have spun and spun and Acton might have been pleased with the resulting damage limitation as far as UEA overall was concerned. But surely no climate scientist in their right mind will want to have either Jones or Briffa associated associated with their research in the future?

This strongly suggests that there may be considerable merit to the views of those who consider the various “investigations” as being little more than rather elaborate and expensive exercises in “reputation rehabilitation”.

Somewhat O/T but … Since you mentioned Osborn, it is worth recalling that Osborn’s name accompanied Briffa’s on the submission of the “response” to (a “reconstruction” of) Boulton’s butchery of David Holland’s submission to Muir Russell. [http://www.cce-review.org/evidence/6%20May%20Briffa%20Osborn%20response.pdf] The excuse for Osborn’s involvement in the preparation of this masterpiece was that he was a “co-author on the chapter in question” (when in fact he was a Contributing Author)

The above pdf – from which accuracy, brevity and clarity are conspicuously absent – is described as “Responses from Keith Briffa and Timothy Osborn to questions from Geoffrey Boulton on Review membership” – which (to my non-scientific and non-statistically oriented eyes) bears absolutely no relationship to the content. Skimming it again today was rather reminiscent of the experience I had recently while examining Schmidt’s ever-changing story.

Sadly far to optimistic, there is no sign the climate science community are willing to do anything about the actions of Jones , Mann and the Team .
Indeed there response has be virtual silence to even the wort of their actions . Why , well it could be because its one in all in deal and its simply not possible to take out these people without bringing the whole lot down .

Remember that 15 years ago climate science was a minor subject with little funded at most universities and with virtual no public interest . Now there is big funded and lots of students chasing these courses which means lots of staff and lots of need for ‘Professorships’ So there is great deal of self interest in keeping things as they are within the climate science community rather they challenge poor scientific behavior of some of its leaders and risk losing the lot .

No AGW no IPCC and no AGW a lot less need for climate science and lot less funding, a much lower public profile and lot less students which means a lot less staff . Although its nice to think that scientists are above such things and are really seekers after truth, the reality is their only human and as such will take the same sort of actions any human does to protect their own livelihoods. So mouths shut and enjoy the ride well its last and no rocking the boat for fear of it tipping over .

Unfortunately, most professions aren’t very quick to judge it’s own members, even when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing. Happens all time in teaching, healthcare, and policing. ( Those familiar with the RCMP know what I’m talking about.)

It seems as there is a ” he’s one of us ” mentality among climate science at the moment, and therefore there is no rush to speak out.
However, the whispers and conversations are certainly there, and will evuntually be heard.

“The year was 1897 and tensions were high in the United States due to the growing conflict between our close neighbour Cuba and Spain. William Randolph Hearst, already an established newspaper owner in San Francisco was engaged in a fierce battle for readers between his newly acquired paper the New York He spent untold sums of money to send reporters and correspondents to Cuba to capture the stories of Cuban insurrection. When his artist correspondent, Frederick Remington, arrived in Cuba to cover the anticipated Spanish-American war only to find there were no visible signs of war and cabled Hearst forpermission to come home, Hearst reportedly cabled back, ”You provide the pictures, and I’ll provide the war. ‘This strategy worked, as the Journal sold more than a million copies during the height of the crisis. It also foretold of what was to come in Hearst’s newspapers, the fact that a publisher and the President had an equal right to act for the nation.”

Newspapers crave news and Murdoch has set up the news; we are in his war of Environmentalists versus Actuality.

I’ve just noticed the BBC’s rather cool power network diagram for Hackgate. Helpful in all kinds of ways but there’s no link between Neil Wallis and “Poor Phil” or anyone at UEA – or even something as basic as Norfolk Police. Don’t you think someone should write in and tell them?

Well, in the words of the BBC, it seems that if they didn’t report it, it may or may not have happened, but it doesn’t warrant entry in their narrative:

The links shown are all those reported in BBC News stories relating to the phone-hacking scandal and appear at the time they were revealed. Other connections may exist. All those arrested as part of the police investigation into hacking are included, but not all arrests in the related investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police will appear.

But speaking of Wallis, the manner in which they’ve chosen to depict (“airbrush”?!) Wallis’ involvement is curious. In addition to omitting mention of the fact that Wallis was actually arrested in July 2011, unlike other involved personnae, there’s no time-context for any of Wallis’ activities and roles:

Wow, thanks Viv … an amazing “divergence” in the Telegraph‘s portrayal of Wallis and that of the BBC. Although the following (from the Telegraph piece) is worth noting:

It is understood that Mr Wallis was also selling crime stories to other newspapers during his time at Scotland Yard.

The legality of Mr Wallis, who was effectively working as a police employee, selling potentially confidential police information to tabloid newspapers is not clear.

Wallis’ actions may or may not have been “legal”; but I cannot imagine any code of “ethics” that would make them permissible. Oh wait, I almost forgot; according to the Financial Times:

Neil Wallis, the Sunday tabloid newspaper’s former executive editor, had also served as a member of the editors’ code of practice committee at the Press Complaints Commission, the watchdog charged with enforcing journalistic ethics.

Considering that (according to the same FT article) Wallis’ position in July was that there should be an investigation so that the “public would be reassured” that such arrangements (as his with Scotland Yard at the time that the NOTW hacking investigation was being re-examined) were “not inappropriate”, one might be forgiven for wondering what the provisions of the “editors’ code of practice” might be.

As for “keeping his connections to other Murdoch journalists open”, it had never occurred to me that Wallis wouldn’t have done so (whether he was being paid or not!)

In this occasional series of the life and times of Neil Wallis, it may be worth noting that the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced yesterday that John Stevens – Baron Stevens of Kirkwhelpington to his friends – will carry out an “independent review” into the future of policing for the Labour party. Stevens was Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police between 2000 and 2005, the last three years of which term our old friend (and most of all Neil’s) Andy Hayman was Chief Constable of Norfolk Constabulary.

The plot thickens when you consider an edit to Wikipedia’s page for John Stevens this afternoon (London time) which, as well as revealing the shock news that the News of the World has closed, gave this additional tidbit:

Stevens also wrote for the News of the World newspaper before it closed in July 2011, many of his earlier articles being ghost-written by Neil Wallis.

How did the person making the edit know that? Because I read it in the Daily Mail in a cafe earlier – then couldn’t find the text online. Oops, almost gave the game away there.